Saturday, March 19, 2016

Pangborn Bar Server Farm

A relatively new feature on the landscape of eastern Washington are server farms. Not a new type of agriculture, but very large computer facilities for data storage. (http://sabeydatacenters.com/intergate-columbia/).
 


This facility was built about eight years ago in East Wenatchee in Douglas County. The site is on the Pangborn Bar, a large gravel bar formed during the early ice age floods along the Columbia River. A large complex of ancient landslides with the Columbia River Basalt Group rises up on the slope above the massive gravel bar.

The site is near perfect server farm site with cheap stable hydro electric power from nearby sources (Douglas County Public Utility District) and inexpensive land area. The $100 million facility is a big boost to the local property tax.

Not far from this site a cache of spear points was uncovered (Moises Aguirre and Mark Mickles discover prehistoric Clovis point artifacts in an East Wenatchee apple orchard on May 27, 1987).
The juxtaposition of two leading edge technologies 10,000 plus years apart on the Pangborn Bar.

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